Other theories in cosmology also seem to presuppose that there must always have been something in existence from which our universe arose, such as strings or membranes. The trouble with such scientific answers to the question of “why there is something and not nothing” is that it is not clear why we should think that there had to be gravity, or the quantum vacuum, or strings, or even a universe at all. It seems entirely possible that instead of these things there could have been absolutely nothing.

This is the point I always get back to. Sure, one can imagine any number of things that might explain the existence of something rather than nothing at all. But that doesn't explain why those things are necessarily the explanation. We always get to the point where an assumption must be made that [so far] no one appears to have either completely verified or completely falsified.

Even the minds making the assumptions themselves have been imagined in all manner of surreal contexts: sim worlds, dreams, matrixes. The embodiment of solipsism or determinism.

Aside from the origin of somethingness, what makes something anything at all?

Another response to Leibniz’s great question is simply to deny that it has an answer. The philosopher Bertrand Russell took this line in a famous radio debate in 1948. He was asked why he thought the universe exists, and responded “I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all”.

On this account, the universe would be what philosophers call a brute fact – something that does not have an explanation.

Of course going this route allows one to use anything as the brute fact. The existence of God for example. Or the "brute fact" can be said to be that something did in fact come into existence out of nothing at all.

But that sort of thing is never really satisfying is it? And precisely because there is almost nothing of which we can't just shrug and say, "it is what it is, let's move on".

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

The most novel answer to Leibniz’s great question is to say that our universe exists because it should. The thinking here is that all possible universes have an innate tendency to exist, but that some have a greater tendency to exist than others. The idea is actually Leibniz’s, who entertained the thought that there may be a struggle for existence between possible worlds, with the very best one coming out on top as if through a process of virtual natural selection. In the end he did not accept the idea, and retreated instead to the more traditional view that the universe exists because God chose to make it so.

It's less the most "novel" answer perhaps than the most "satisfying". Why? Because not only does it encompass an understanding of somethingness, it grounds whatever that understanding turns out to be in a reason why it is this particular something and not another.

And even though it may not be the teleological foundation that suits us, it can at least be said to encompass the best of all possible teleological foundations.

In other words, if it can't be God -- the perfect explanation intertwined in the perfect reason -- at least it's not the god-awful "brute facticity" in which our lives are ultimately meaningless and absurd.

What doesn't change however is that there still appears to be no way in which to move the discussion much beyond the "wild ass guesses" themselves.

Like this one:

But the idea of a virtual struggle among possible universes has appealed to some modern philosophers, who have followed it to its logical conclusion and claimed that the possible universe with the greatest tendency to exist – which might be because it is the best, or because it contains some important feature such as the conditions that permit life to arise – will actually bring itself into existence.

According to this theory, our universe becomes actual not because God or anything else made it so but because it literally lifted itself out of non-existence and made itself actual. Weird? Yes. But we shouldn’t let that put us off. After all, an extraordinary philosophical question might just require an extraordinary answer.

Modern philosophers? Well, what they have as an advantage over the ancient ones is a vastly more sophisticated/comprehensive understanding of the universe that science has provided.

But, come on, how close is science to actually pinning down a multiverse in which [perhaps] our own universe is the "fittest"?

Instead, what science has succeeded best at is noting just how staggeringly vast this particular universe is: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=194813

"It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe."

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Why is there something rather than nothing?By Robert Adler From the BBC Earth website

People have wrestled with the mystery of why the universe exists for thousands of years. Pretty much every ancient culture came up with its own creation story - most of them leaving the matter in the hands of the gods - and philosophers have written reams on the subject. But science has had little to say about this ultimate question.

This certainly makes sense. After all, science deals not with what we wish to know [or believe] or what might be known going all the way out to the end of the metaphysical limb...but what in fact can be known going back to something out of nothing or something always existing.

However, in recent years a few physicists and cosmologists have started to tackle it. They point out that we now have an understanding of the history of the universe, and of the physical laws that describe how it works. That information, they say, should give us a clue about how and why the cosmos exists.

Their admittedly controversial answer is that the entire universe, from the fireball of the Big Bang to the star-studded cosmos we now inhabit, popped into existence from nothing at all. It had to happen, they say, because "nothing" is inherently unstable.

This idea may sound bizarre, or just another fanciful creation story. But the physicists argue that it follows naturally from science's two most powerful and successful theories: quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Here though, lets face it, certain scientists become little more than certain philosophers. They are still speculating out at the end of the metaphysical limb, only with more actual facts than ever before.

But what on earth does it mean in terms of all this new knowledge that they have accumulated to speak of "nothing" as being inherently unstable?

Would they not need to find and then examine a nothing in order to demonstrate its properties? But in being part of the something that certainly seems to exist, how could this not be entirely futile?

And are not quantum mechanics and general relativity intrinsic components of somethingness? Why do they suggest something out of nothing rather than something ever and always?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

It's less the most "novel" answer perhaps than the most "satisfying". Why? Because not only does it encompass an understanding of somethingness, it grounds whatever that understanding turns out to be in a reason why it is this particular something and not another.

And even though it may not be the teleological foundation that suits us, it can at least be said to encompass the best of all possible teleological foundations.

In other words, if it can't be God -- the perfect explanation intertwined in the perfect reason -- at least it's not the god-awful "brute facticity" in which our lives are ultimately meaningless and absurd.

What doesn't change however is that there still appears to be no way in which to move the discussion much beyond the "wild ass guesses" themselves.

Modern philosophers? Well, what they have as an advantage over the ancient ones is a vastly more sophisticated/comprehensive understanding of the universe that science has provided.

But, come on, how close is science to actually pinning down a multiverse in which [perhaps] our own universe is the "fittest"?

Instead, what science has succeeded best at is noting just how staggeringly vast this particular universe is: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=194813

"It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe."

What does this excessive amount of invisible matter/energy indicate about the fate of our universe, like whether gravity halts the universal acceleration (Big Crunch), or if we get blown asunder by the Big Chill and/or the Big Rip? Or what about those higher dimensions? Or what even about Heavenly Jerusalem being separated from us by a void indicate about the higher reaches (just food for thought, I don't expect answers to all of those questions)?

We live in a monster labyrinth, and to decipher all of these mysteries would make big steps towards 1 day controlling all of these phenomena, and being masters of hyperspace (perhaps, we could even escape from the death of the universe in big chill or big rip big freeze by tunneling into the ocean of nirvana sprouting the bubbles of genesis in the infinite outpouring of the multiverse (and I say, OMNIVERSE!)

RaptorWizard - Secret Garden of Rare Quotes viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194124RevanFailNhilusOwn https://www.youtube.com/user/RevanFailNhilusOwnmachine/celebi tesla Polarities/Extremities http://montalk.net/The Dragon Mind of Zen https://www.youtube.com/user/bodhichildLuke Skywalker http://www.thehiddenrecords.com/How many stars are there? I'm going to be the first one to see them all!The idea is to carry a wish crown, a kind of shimmering artwork or network gallery, a set of bands or chosen assignments that flips a GameBoyColor into a Will-o~the+Wisp/ectoplasm, or the whispering of the Thunder being the Oracle.The highest North is the Heaviest helmet, immersing you into all of the constellations!!Breton to Skyrim, so the Devil made multifaceted copies of himself that got progressively better along the Way! Polaris Statues have orbs that stand out from all the rest slows people down! The dark side is small compared to the Light! Lao Tzu is Yoda’s Tao.

barbarianhorde wrote:What Nietzsche really meant, in one phrase, is, deal with it, man. He didn't even ask it of women.

Knowing that they would have, then, likely gotten pregnant as some point, and that a baby-sized object was inevitably going to take hours to come out of their vaginas....well, they're a group that would have been told to deal with it by the universe. You told me a baby-sized object was going to take hours to come out of a tiny orifice in my body and that if it didn't seem to be going well some stranger was going to use a scalpel on my intimate parts and/or reach into me...that's having to deal with it. For women, having to deal with it is an ontological given.

Yeah, thats how it always appeared to me.I never could quite grasp where men who think women are the weaker sex are coming from.I can understand late stage abortion as a kind of revenge on this harshness of their lives. It is an unimaginable cruelty, but it is a reflection of the pain they were dealt.

It is quite miraculous that the pain of giving birth prevents so few women from having offspring. But obviously the miracle is evolution itself, women who didn't feel like giving birth, well they didn't reproduce. Rarely was a matter more elementary.

Why is there something rather than nothing?By Robert Adler From the BBC Earth website

Particles from empty space

First we have to take a look at the realm of quantum mechanics. This is the branch of physics that deals with very small things: atoms and even tinier particles. It is an immensely successful theory, and it underpins most modern electronic gadgets.

Quantum mechanics tells us that there is no such thing as empty space. Even the most perfect vacuum is actually filled by a roiling cloud of particles and antiparticles, which flare into existence and almost instantaneously fade back into nothingness.

Of course this is the part that stops many of us right in our tracks. We don't have the capacity to understand these QM realitionships, let alone to connect the dots between that knowledge and what most have to admit is the mindboggling reality of "modern electronic gadgets". How is it even possible to have invented the Smart Phone?! That's where many of us are. So we have no choice but to hear out those who do understand it.

Or, rather, understand it to the extent that it is in fact understood here and now given the gap between this and all that can be known about it.

But: Given that gap, how is it really possible for any scientist to know for certain what QM tells us about empty space?

And then on to how they connect the dots between the QM world and something rather than nothing.

What does it ultimately mean for something to "flare into existence" and then "almost instantaneously fade back into nothingness".

And isn't this empty space already existing in the somethingness we call the universe?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

And isn't this empty space already existing in the somethingness we call the universe?

Yes of course it is.

I like that you acknowledge the sheer wizardry of science, and that very few people actually know what theyre talking about.

I would say, the ontological, that means metaphysical riddle of the OPs phrase, something instead of nothing, happens apart from all the permutations of ... existence itself. So you can't look at existence, what happens there, and explain from it why it exists.

You have to look at yourself, ultimately, to address that question.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. ~ Владимир Ильич Ульянов Ленин

barbarianhorde wrote: So you can't look at existence, what happens there, and explain from it why it exists.

You have to look at yourself, ultimately, to address that question.

This just brings us back to the fact that some are considerably more sophisticated in grasping that which physicists [exploring both the very, very large, and the very, very small] do seem able to establish as being as close to the objective truth as we seem able to get --- given the gap between what they know and all that there is yet to be known.

So, for most to look to themselves, is to make the solution that much more distant.

But the tricky part here is that it matters not how close or how far any of us are to understanding it. What counts revolves more around the extent to which what someone does believe is seen by them to be what is in fact true.

That's why I come back over and again to the distinction between what someone believes is true [or claims to know] and that which they are able to demonstrate to others as something all rational men and women are obligated to believe and to know.

It's just that in turn I point out the seeming futility of anyone actually accomplishing this in our lifetimes.

It's fascinating stuff to speculate about, but we will go to the grave never really being able to move much beyond that. And this perturbs some more than others.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

iambiguous wrote:I come back over and again to the distinction between what someone believes is true [ or claims to know ] and that which they are able to demonstrate to others as something all rational men and women are obligated to believe and to know

Its just that in turn I point out the seeming futility of anyone actually accomplishing this in our lifetimes

You cannot simply expect all rational men and women to accept as true what you yourself accept as trueApart from anything else it is beyond the ability of anyone to convince anyone of anything because they can only do that themselvesThe best thing to do is make your arguments as sound as possible and leave others to decide whether or not they should accept them

iambiguous wrote:I come back over and again to the distinction between what someone believes is true [ or claims to know ] and that which they are able to demonstrate to others as something all rational men and women are obligated to believe and to know

Its just that in turn I point out the seeming futility of anyone actually accomplishing this in our lifetimes

You cannot simply expect all rational men and women to accept as true what you yourself accept as true

That's my point. But there are clearly any number of things in the either/or world that can be reasonably demonstrated to be true for all of us. Unless of course even this truth is embedded in a sim world, or a dream world, or one or another Matrix type reality.

In fact last night the Science Channel aired a Doc in which it was suggested that what we construe to be reality is instead just a computer simulation.

But: in the is/ought world, moral and political values are seen by me and my ilk to be largely "existential contraptions".

And, re this thread, the truth behind something instead of nothing is so mind-boggling, no one would seem able to go much beyond the assumptions you'll find [even among scientists] in "wild ass guesses".

The fact that some are more informed than others doesn't make them any less embedded in the gap between what some think they know now and all that can be known.

surreptitious75 wrote: Apart from anything else it is beyond the ability of anyone to convince anyone of anything because they can only do that themselves

In reality however we go about the business of interacting with others in many, many different ways in many, many different contexts without having to stop and insist that others must first convince them that what they say or do is in fact true.

surreptitious75 wrote: The best thing to do is make your arguments as sound as possible and leave others to decide whether or not they should accept them

Indeed, but, again, out in the world of actual human interactions, there are any number of contexts in which arguments collide such that resolutions revolve around either might makes right, right makes might, or moderation, negotiation and compromise is seen to reflect the best of all possible worlds.

And, here, over and again, I say bring the arguments down to earth. What are we in fact able to demonstrate as true for all of us? And what might we have to conclude are beyond pinning down?

Something instead of nothing being just one of them.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles